Secrets on 26th Street (9 page)

Susan nearly dropped Lester's cup in his lap.
Bea had paid their back rent? Where had Bea gotten that kind of money?

Praying her eyes didn't betray her shock, she forced a confident smile. “Oh, yes, I forgot she said she was going to do that. Care for sugar, Mr. Barrow?” A confident person, Susan was sure, would offer sugar to a guest, even if the guest was Lester Barrow. Luckily there was a tea-spoonful left at the bottom of the sugar bin.

Lester accepted the sugar and stirred it into his tea. “You didn't tell me, Missie O'Neal, that your boarder was a cousin of your father's, and so highly connected at that—her grandfather in the British Parliament and all. It was kind of her, wasn't it, to come all this way to assist your poor widowed mother? If you'd only told me who she was, that day in the bakery, why, I wouldn't have been worrying a bit about getting my money.”

Bea? Her father's cousin?
That was ridiculous, Susan thought.

For a long moment Susan's mind was blank. Finally she managed to say something that she hoped sounded reasonable. “I … I didn't think about it, I guess. I was so excited, you know, about her coming, about meeting Dad's cousin.” A nervous laugh escaped her lips, and instantly she scolded herself. She'd be in a fine position, wouldn't she, if Lester figured out she was bluffing …

But he didn't seem to notice. He finished his tea and wiped his mouth. Then he pushed himself back from the table. “I must be going, lassie. I've still the fifth floor to collect from, not to mention my buildings on 25th. Tell your mother there's no hurry on the rent. I know now she's good for it. She and your
boarder.
” He closed one eyelid in what Susan supposed was a wink.

Like a lizard blinking at a fly
, Susan thought,
before it snatches up the fly for its dinner
. She shivered. “I'll tell her you were here, Mr. Barrow.”

“Aye, you do that. I'll be back next week sometime. Perhaps when your charming cousin is here. Good day.”

The door closed with a thud that echoed through the empty rooms. Susan stood still, listening, hardly able to believe that Lester was gone. She kept thinking that he might come bursting back through the door, chuckling in the same nasty way that he had in the barbershop, and tell her that it had all been a joke, that he was throwing them out on the street and taking Susan to jail for lying to him.

At last Susan was convinced he wasn't coming back. She collapsed in Mum's rocking chair and tried to straighten out her tangled thoughts.

Foremost in her mind was the fact that the overdue rent was all paid, that worry wiped away by Bea's generosity. Susan's heart swelled with affection for Bea, yet she wondered
why
Bea did it, and
how
. Susan supposed that Bea simply wanted to help out the family. Mum would have objected to accepting charity, of course, but Susan guessed that Bea hadn't told Mum till after the rent had been paid.

The “how” posed more of a problem. Did Bea have that much money to just give away? Maybe Bea's family was more well-to-do than she'd led Susan to believe. But if that was true, it presented the biggest puzzle of all—namely, what in the world was Bea doing in Chelsea?

A chill ran down Susan's spine as the answer unfolded inside her head: something that
must be kept secret for now
.

Susan gave a small, strangled cry. Bea's letter! She had forgotten all about it.

In her mind's eye, Susan again saw Bea whisking the letter off the floor and stashing it in the nightstand drawer. As Susan recalled the incident, it occurred to her that Bea had seemed awfully eager to get that letter out of Susan's sight.

On an impulse, Susan got up and walked back to Bea's room. She stood in the doorway, tempted to go in and peek in the drawer, just to see if the letter was still there.

It was wrong to snoop, she knew, but she couldn't forget that she'd caught Bea in one lie already.
If she's lying about why she came to Chelsea
, Susan thought,
maybe we should know about it
.

Susan thought of the conversation she'd overheard between Mum and Bea, and Bea muttering about a war. Had Susan been wrong at the time to ignore her fears for Mum's safety?

Susan stared at the nightstand, struggling with her conscience over whether to look for the letter. That was when she noticed Bea's framed photograph was gone. Susan's eyes swept the room, the nightstand, the dresser. The photograph had disappeared.

At that moment, Susan heard a faint peal of laughter from the street below. She glanced out the open window and saw Bea and the girls returning from the park. Lucy was skipping down the sidewalk, holding fast to the string of a balloon. Bea and Helen were right behind, holding hands. Helen was nibbling on an ice cream cone; Bea had a newspaper tucked under one arm and a shopping bag in her free hand.

Now it was too late to look for the letter. Susan tried to swallow her fears about the secrets it might hold and went to meet Bea and her sisters at the door.

“You seem to be feeling better,” Bea said, smiling. “And here we made a special trip to the pushcart vendors for all this food—”

“Bea said you needed a treat,” Helen interrupted, “so I took her over to Tenth Avenue.” Tenth Avenue was in the Jewish section of Chelsea. Since the Jewish Sabbath was Saturday, the pushcart vendors were out in force on Sunday.

“Bea got oranges, Susie!” Lucy said. She had chocolate ice cream smeared all over her mouth. “And see the pretty balloon she bought me?” She beamed. Lucy had never had a balloon, though she begged for one every time they went to the park.

Helen held out a small bag to Susan. “We brought you some candy, Susie. Horehound. Bea said it would help your stomach.”

“We didn't suppose you would feel like ice cream,” Bea added.

Susan thanked Bea and forced a smile. That missing photograph was nagging at her. Yesterday Bea had made a point of turning it away from Susan's view, and today it was gone. A small thing, maybe, but peculiar. And all these peculiar things about Bea were beginning to trouble Susan quite a lot.

Susan started unloading the shopping bag. There were oranges and bananas, a tin of cookies—Bea called them “biscuits”—four big pickles wrapped in paper, a slab of cheese—

Then Susan's eye fell on the newspaper Bea had placed on the table.
SUFFRAGISTS JAILED!
the headline shouted. Susan quickly scanned the article, her thoughts pulled back to yesterday's riot. According to the newspaper, the suffragists were being blamed for the violence, and the mayor had sworn to make examples of the women who were arrested. He promised that they would receive heavy fines and jail sentences. Susan shook her head. With Tammany Hall against them, how could the suffragists hope to succeed in New York City?

“You'll come, too, won't you, Susie?”

Susan pried her thoughts from the suffragists and looked down into Lucy's hopeful face. “Come where, sweetie?”

“Our picnic on the roof. Bea says we'll have cheese sandwiches and oranges.”

“Yeah, sure, I'll come.” Outings to the park and picnics on the roof—Susan wondered whether Bea was trying to keep them so busy they wouldn't have time to worry about Mum. It was only a stray thought, but it planted itself in Susan's head, and it stayed there the rest of the day.

C
HAPTER
9

A T
ELEGRAM AND A
L
ETTER

Mum still wasn't home by Sunday evening, and Susan's uneasiness turned to fear. Tomorrow would be Monday—a workday. If Mum didn't show up at the office tomorrow, she'd be fired. Something had happened, Susan was sure, something that was keeping Mum away.

Susan tried to voice her concern to Bea, but Bea insisted there was nothing to worry about. “Perhaps your mother made arrangements with Mr. Riley in case she had to stay longer.”

Susan knew there was no such thing as “arrangements” for workers in Chelsea. If you displeased your boss, you lost your job, and everyone understood that's how it was. Everyone except Bea, it seemed.

Susan was too worried now to be satisfied with Bea's guesses about what
might
have happened. She wanted to know something for sure. “Can't you send a telegram to Aunt Blanche? I just want to know that Mum is safe.”

Bea touched Susan's arm. “You have
my
assurance, love. Isn't that enough?”

Susan fixed her eyes on a crack in the linoleum. She couldn't look at Bea because she knew her answer was no. Bea's assurances were no longer enough. Susan's heart beat faster as she realized what that meant. She couldn't rely on Bea anymore. She would have to take action herself to find Mum. First thing tomorrow she would wire Aunt Blanche.

After dropping Helen off at school, Susan went to the Western Union office on 30th Street and plunked down a quarter from her barbershop money to send the telegram. All morning she hung around 30th Street waiting for an answer. She wandered over to the docks and watched the longshoremen unloading ships, but after a while, that made her heart ache for Dad. Which, in turn, made her worry more about Mum.

By three o'clock, she still had no answer, and she decided she'd better go on to the barbershop. The hours at the barbershop dragged by, and when six o'clock arrived, Susan stowed her shoe-shine kit and fairly bolted for the door. The long walk back to the Western Union office seemed endless. The sun cast long shadows of buildings across the sidewalk in front of her. Hundreds of faces and figures hurried past her, but Susan didn't see them. All she thought about was her telegram and the reply that would surely be waiting for her.

But there was no reply.

Her chest tight with disappointment, Susan rushed out into the alley and nearly tripped over a scrawny dog nosing in a garbage can. She had counted so much on that telegram. Now her mind was a blur. She didn't know what to do next.

Then it struck her that maybe she'd gotten no telegram because Mum was already home!

She raced to 26th Street and the familiar red tenement. Somehow she knew that Mum would be there. Mum would be at the big black stove in the kitchen, humming to herself as she fixed her girls their dinner.

Susan burst through the kitchen door, her lips already forming words of welcome, but her hopes sank when it was Bea she saw chopping cabbage on top of the washtub cover. Mum was not home.

Bea was smiling. “I've got good news for you, love. I got a telegram today.”

Susan's pulse quickened. Could Aunt Blanche's telegram somehow have been delivered to their flat while Susan was at work?

“You needn't worry anymore about your mum,” said Bea. “She wired from Long Island. She's enjoying her rest so much, she decided to stay on for a few more days.”

Susan's first reaction was relief.
Mum was safe
. But as Bea's statement sank in, Susan's heart twisted: Mum, staying out of work simply to enjoy herself? It would never happen. Bea couldn't be telling the truth.

Susan opened her mouth to say so, then shut it quickly as she noticed Helen, sitting cross-legged on the floor with Lucy. Helen was wearing the most troubled expression Susan had ever seen on her face. And she was beckoning Susan toward the bedroom.

Once alone in their bedroom, Helen, in a frightened whisper, told Susan of the telegram's arrival only a few minutes before Susan got home. “I saw Bea's face when she opened it, Susie. The way she looked, it wasn't good news she was reading. She wouldn't let me see it when I asked to read it. There was bad news in the telegram—I know it.”

“What are you saying?” A lump of fear was gathering in Susan's stomach. She knew very well what Helen was getting at.

Helen's voice sounded small. “I'm afraid something bad has happened to Mum, and Bea doesn't want us to know. Susie, I'm scared.”

Susan pulled her sister close to her chest. She could feel Helen's heart pounding. “Don't be, sweetie. We don't know anything yet. We've got to get hold of that telegram and read it. That's all.”

Helen pulled away and stared up at Susan. “How? Bea's got it in the pocket of her apron. We'll never be able to get it from her.”

“If something is truly important, there's usually a way to get it.” Bea's words sprang from Susan's mouth as naturally as if they had been her own. Susan's chest tightened painfully as she realized how Bea had become such a part of her. “Just give me a minute to think,” she said to Helen. She paced over to the window and stared out at the shops across the street. From here she could almost read the labels on the cereal boxes stacked in the front window of Mr. Haggerty's grocery store. Then her mind jumped to the way Lucy always poured too much milk on her cereal. And then, Susan had an idea.

She knew exactly how they would get the telegram from Bea.

At dinner that night, Susan ate slowly, waiting for her cue from Helen. Helen was chattering about the Girl Scout organizational meeting at the Hudson Guild that Mum had promised to take her to tonight. Helen was hinting for Bea to take her, but Bea was only half listening. Her attention seemed focused on the wall calendar next to the icebox. Susan glanced at Bea's plate; she'd barely touched her food. Bea was preoccupied with something, that was for sure. Susan hoped the telegram would tell them
with what
.